Working out due date!

Hello all, well we are now approaching our 14th or is it 13th week??! We are a bit confused with dates as originally our 40 week due date (which i know in India means nothing as the little ones seem to some whenever they feel ready!) but originally the scans were dating us 13 weeks this tuesday (25/01/11) but the last scan meant we were 14 weeks this Monday (24/01/11) Thats a whole week and a day out!

Is this normal when using frozen embies? We don't really mind as the pregnancy is developing well and BAM is growing with a strong heartbeat. We just want to work out a rough date to book open tickets to Delhi!

So our original due date was 02nd August (40 weeks) so we thought arrival in Delhi on 12th July (37 weeks), but now should we aim to arrive on 04th July with the scan showing a week ahead??

Any help would be greatly appreciated! All the best to those on the same journey as us and we look forward to our paths crossing some point this summer :)

6 weeks, 8 weeks, 10 weeks and today we are 12 weeks.....

We've been hiding a huge secret.....as the title might suggest we are 12 weeks pregnant! We are over the moon and expecting our little one sometime in July! The official due date is August 2nd but we'll be in Delhi around 12th July (37 weeks) and a week off Adam's 30th Birthday...a really cool birthday present or what??!!
As most of you are aware, we had two early miscarriages in Thailand and then a negative in India, so we had our final 3 Frosties and decided for one more go as this entire process is both mentally, physically and financially exhausting and Voila! As many of you have told us before, keep going and it WILL happen!

We wanted to wait till now as we have a good strong heartbeat and the baby is developing well, we've decided to use the name BAM (Baby Adam and Michael, Sorry Will and Michael, it was too good to not use!) for the meantime until the birth.

Our first result on about 16th November showed a good strong beta of 330...followed by the 30th November with a well defined gestational sac, 18th December we had a heartbeat! (whoo hoo!) and then 3rd January 2011 showed a good heartbeat and well developing fetus, we've just our 12 week scan today and here are the pics.....

A massive thank you to SCI healthcare, Dr Shivani, Dr Jolly, Shilpi, Neha and anyone else who has helped us so far on our journey! Roll on 20 odd weeks and a hot summer in India!!!! Whoooooo hooooo!!!

A big fat massive negative

As the title suggests, we are very much not pregnant.

It's like a massive blow to the core of so much that we wished for.

Third attempt, third disappointment, I think we can safely say that this might be it for us with surrogacy and surrogacy dreams for a while. I'm sure it's so easy for people to say 'don't give up' or 'those who don't try fail' but so much time, energy. emotion and financial resources have gone into this it starts to impact dramatically and negatively on your relationship with the person you love the most. You spend your time dreaming rather than living, pull all your financial resources into what you wish for rather than living life to the full with each other, you fill your days with anxiety rather than freedom and you spend 90% of your life in misery looking for a glint of joy.

That joy is not meant to be for us at this point in time, and we have put life on hold for nothing so it seems...

Exhausted, disappointed, empty and nothing anyone can do or say will change that. What will be will be and so it seems what we want will not or cannot be ours at this point in time.

Time to start living life a while rather than questioning what it will not give us.

Photos of dogs as have nothing else to write and am bored whilst anxiously waiting....

The 2WW (which isn't really a 2WW) is starting to play more on my mind now. I've been lucky to have been busy with work and traveling, but now I'm back working from home, I can feel the insanity starting to brew in anticipation of this Sunday's test results...

The 2WW has absolutely flown by, but I have a feeling that the next few days will make up for it as I can feel the day's getting gradually longer with Saturday no doubt feeling like a week!!!

In the mean time, I feel it rude of me not to introduce our other babies, Fogg and Fergus our dogs! They missed me loads when I was away I am guessing as they are practically stuck to me like velcro. If only they knew the sleepless nights that not just us but they will be in for when all goes to plan, they're moody little men at the best of times and I'm sure they'll make their displeasure known!!! :)

They absolutely hate waring any form of clothing, so I'm sure they'll appreciate someone else being dressed up and not them!!!

5 more days of waiting.....

Just under 2WW :)

Well, we had great news that 12 of the embryo's all excellent quality were cultured to the blastocyst stage! this was wonderful news....we transferred 3 top quality blasts on friday 1st October and had 6 good quality ones left for freezing! We are now in the 2WW, well it's not officially 2ww its about 10 days as the embryos are older....role on next sunday! Please stick and lots of baby dust our way! Your very wanted little ones :) How cute are they already??

Embryos

We have just had some news from Dr Shivani. We have the following embryos that will be allowed to culture until tomorrow, so it looks like a transfer might take place any time soon!

10 x 4 cell grade one embryos

2 x 4 cell grade two embryos

This is almost exactly the same number of embryos we had in Thailand, but the quality at this stage is much higher. (We had about 11 embryos, but only a couple were grade one off the top of my head. )

So this all looks very positive and a definite improvement on our last attempt.

All being well, it looks like the joy, angst, optimism and anxiety of the 2WW might very nearly be upon us!!!!!

Will update tomorrow as soon as we know more....

Egg Collection....

How nice it feels to have some good news for a change!

We have just found out that we have 29 eggs, 26 are mature and all are good quality, horray!

Very much looking forward to Tuesday when we will know how many embryos we might have...

Will update soon....

Egg Retrieval Day Approaches...

Firstly, MASSIVE congratulations to all of those who have recently welcomed their children into the world there are so many in the last few weeks, and hopefully many more to come. Those of us who are on this journey will hopefully have this joy to come one day soon!

Feeling very lazy on the blogging front, fortunately we are both so busy with work it is a welcome 'mind occupier' and we cannot believe that we are nearly at egg retrieval day! We had a minor delay due to a small medical issue with our ED, but all seems to be resolved and we have been updated that egg retrieval will take place on 25th or 26th September. Absolutely looking forward to finding out all the vital info that follows... and fingers very tightly crossed for some good embryo's!!!!!

We are finding it quite hard to believe that the 2WW might soon be upon us. Thank goodness for a busy workload that will hopefully be a good distraction, although it is impossible not to feel anxious.

Anyone who has read our older posts will know that a huge amount of stress from our previous attempts came from how bad we felt things were handled and information (or lack of it) was passed on. All we can say is that Dr Shivani and her team do an amazing job of keeping us well informed and supported. We never have to ask a question as information flows so freely and clearly you feel you get the answers before needing to ask the question!!! This is the polar opposite of our experience in Thailand, and exceeds our expectations!

Everything feels so much in order and in control, it's actually quite hard to know what to write, especially when there is nothing to complain about (in which case I could have banged on about it all day)!!!!

Will post soon when we have the results of egg collection and fertilization....

Start of a new journey...

Today, we are in Delhi, after a couple of blissful weeks in Italy relaxing and planning out next step on our journey to parenthood.

So many people have recommended Dr Shivani at SCI in Delhi, it was obvious to us that this is where we should take our journey following our stress and disappointment in Thailand! And we are so happy that she agreed to help and work with us.

Today, we had the pleasure of meeting Dr Shivani! I can't stress how different (in the best possible way) and positive we feel after meeting her. Given that the Doctor in Thailand did not even speak English, we feel like we achieved in one morning at SCI what would have taken weeks of unanswered emails and ignored phone calls in Bangkok!!! But now I guess is the time to put behind us past grievances and focus purely on the positive experience and optimism that we feel we will enjoy with Dr Shivani in Delhi!!! She also has a great team behind her, and info is never short or thin on the ground. For us, the not knowing and waiting is the hardest part, but quick and thorough answers make it so much more bearable, it's impossible not to feel good about where we are at right now.

Because of work, we have only been able to come to Delhi for 2 days!!!!! We will be donning our tourist hats tomorrow on a day trip to the Taj Mahal before a late meeting at SCI then on to the airport. Such a shame that we can't spend more time here :(

Delhi is not how we expected at all, beyond the visual chaos we feel surprisingly chilled, and everyone we've met is so unbelievably friendly it feels like the Truman Show!

We were lucky enough to have the exact egg donor we had our heart set on and we gather that she will be having her period in the next few days. We are looking at a embryo transfer mid-September which doesn't feel too far away, and we are sure given how busy work is it will absolutely fly by, praise be!!!!

It seems that there are a lot of recent or imminent births at SCI which is obviously fantastic news, at the same time it reminds us of how far we are from our dream, but hopefully being here in Delhi brings us one step closer.

It actually feels good to be blogging again, as we know that when we do, things are happening!!!

Bad news again and back to square one... horrible!

As the title suggests, we today received bad news. Although we don't have full details from the Doctor, we just had a message to say that our SM had an ultrasound and the MD says she will definitely have her period any day soon. We don't know if the hCG levels dropped or increased, but can most safely presume that there was no visible gestational sac at 5 weeks and 6 days.

I think we definitely need to look to India, we feel very much in the dark in Thailand and are not sure that it would be wise to continue our journey there.

We blew all of our savings on 2 attempts in Thailand, and now we have to find an affordable way to vigorously pursue our dreams of parenthood. Like anyone, we could save over a few months, but the sense of urgency and desire is far too great.

Does anyone mind letting us know what clinics they are using? We feel the urge to contact clinics as urgently as possible. Any names and contact details would be massively appreciated.

We have to pursue our dream, albeit with a heavy heart from todays very sad news.

If you prefer to send a private email, it's michaelallton at hotmail dot co dot uk (not com dot uk)

Thanks everyone x